Various applications utilizing location information have been developed in recent years. A positioning technique such as GPS (global positioning system) based positioning or radio network based positioning produces location information that could be used for various purposes such as for targeted advertising. Applications utilizing location information may request it from other applications or devices. For instance, an application in a first mobile terminal may show the location of a second device on a map, whereby the first terminal needs to request current location information from the second terminal. In a known network-based positioning system, these requests are delivered to a mobile network which then sends the location information to the first terminal, if submission of the location information has been authorized. If the submission has not been authorized, the mobile network may send an authorization request to the second terminal. The location information is then transmitted to the first terminal only if an authorization to do so is received from the second terminal.
Location information on a device is sensitive data, and it is important to provide means for controlling which entities have access to location information. In the above example, access control may be arranged by the second terminal receiving the location information request from the first terminal. The access control may be arranged in the second terminal by requesting authorization for sending the location information from the user of the second terminal or automatically by pre-determined rules determining whether the information may be sent. However, the usage of these access control methods has been cumbersome for the user, since new entries for access control information and the details thereof have to be manually entered from scratch.